A CBC production first broadcast by CBC under Festival, 23 October 1963.
Fable is a British television play, shown on 27 January 1965 as an episode of The Wednesday Play series on BBC 1. Written by John Hopkins, the play is set in a parallel totalitarian Britain where those in authority are black people, and white people are their social underdogs - a reversal of the situation in contemporary apartheid South Africa. It was directed by Christopher Morahan and produced by James MacTaggart.
A play by John Hopkins that takes an original look at the eternal triangle.
The story is of a young man, Danny Lee, imprisoned for six months after attacking a police officer. In prison he is talked into attacking a warden by two more experienced criminals so that they can come to the warden's rescue and obtain an early release. The warden dies, and the protagonist is sentenced to death by hanging. Three clear Sundays refers to the time that must elapse between a sentence to death and execution. The writer, James O'Connor, had previously been sentenced to death but was given a reprieve.
Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins. Depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war, it was withdrawn from the broadcast schedule due to fear by the BBC and the British Government that it was too horrifying for TV. It premiered at a London cinema six months later and was shown at film festivals, winning a special prize at the Venice Film Festival. It then won the 1967 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
This episode is about Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. Episode writer Dennis Potter mixed biographical drama with a psychological profile to explore the roots of Dodgson's creativity. Dodgson tells stories to ten-year-old Alice Liddell. What follows are recreations of scenes adapted from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, designed to resemble the Sir John Tenniel illustrations.
A well-to-do girl leaves her parents and comfortable home in fashionable Chelsea to sample life in working-class Battersea, but is not prepared for the culture shock awaiting her.
A simple-minded man on the outs with his wife and her family must take a large amount of his father-in-law's hard-earned money to buy a house, in the belief that home-ownership will make him responsible and respectable. Instead, he throws it away on a mad spending spree with his daughter.
Written by Peter Ustinov. First shown as a Thursday Theatre on BBC2 28 January 1965.
Written by Daniel Farson; first shown in the series Londoners on BBC2 8 July 1965
The play tells the story of a young couple, Cathy (played by Carol White) and Reg (Ray Brooks), and their descent into poverty and homelessness. At the start of the film, Cathy leaves her parents' overcrowded rural home and hitch-hikes to the city, where she finds work and meets Reg, a well-paid lorry driver. They fall in love, marry, and rent a modern flat in a building that does not allow children. Cathy soon becomes pregnant and must stop working, and Reg is injured on the job and becomes unemployed. The loss of income and birth of the baby force them to leave their flat, and they are unable to find another affordable place to live that permits children. They move in with Reg's mother, until tensions develop between her and Cathy in the crowded flat. A kind elderly landlady, Mrs. Alley, rents to them for a while, during which time Cathy has two more children. Mrs. Alley even allows them to stay when they fall behind on the rent. However, she dies suddenly and her nephew and heir has the family evicted by bailiffs. The family then moves to a caravan parked in a camp where several other families are already living in caravans, but the local residents object to the camp and set it on fire, killing several children. Cathy, Reg and their children are forced to illegally squat in a wrecked, abandoned building. They repeatedly try to get decent housing through the local council, but are not helped because of their many moves and the long list of other people also seeking housing assistance. Cathy and Reg decide to separate temporarily so that Cathy and the children can move into an emergency homeless shelter where husbands are not allowed to stay. Reg leaves the area to seek employment. Cathy's loneliness and frustration finally boil over and she becomes belligerent with the shelter authorities, who are often cold and judgemental towards the women living in the shelter. Cathy's allotted time at the shelter expires while Reg is away, and she and her two remaining c
The story of a bricklayer, who moonlights as a revolutionary
A study of schizophrenia. Kate, a young woman, is denied any expression of her own individuality by her repressive, suburban family. But the psychiatric methods of the time choose to ignore this important factor of mental illness.
David Mercer's black comedy drama about what happens when two unhappy relationships intertwine. Gerald, a highly intelligent senior civil servant, and his wife, Monica, enjoy a 'civilised', delicately-balanced marriage. Julie, a brittle and vulnerable young woman, is involved in an equally delicate relationship with Ben, a violent, bitter and jealous draughtsman. When Gerald decides to seduce Julie, the two partnerships meet a crossroads. Starring Denholm Elliott as Gerald, Gwen Watford as Monica, Glenda Jackson as Julie and David Summer as Ben. Directed by Alan Bridges
Dennis Potter's fictional account of an event that happened in the Forest of Dean in the 1890s when four Frenchmen came over the border from Gloucester with dancing bears, who were subsequently killed by miners coming off the late shift in retaliation for an unrelated attack on a young local girl.
Leo McKern and Michele Dotrice star in the first of David Mercer's trilogy of plays charting the dissolution of Robert Kelvin. An illustrious, ageing and consciously socialist novelist, his memories are triggered by his love for Emma - a woman forty years his junior. His inability to respond to her any more than to the other two women in his life heightens the agony of the play's climax. Also starring Thorley Walters and Rosalind Knight. Directed by Alan Bridges.
Following the Devlin Report, a dispute about decasualisation in the Liverpool docks leads to a strike. Six weeks into the dispute, the Strike Committee reject the employers' demands for a return to work pending negotiations, and decide to escalate the industrial action into the political - the workers occupy the docks and commence to run the operation themselves. This occupation, though violently suppressed by the state and the owners, is nonetheless conceived as a gesture of possibility to the nation's workers; Jack Regan, the chief organiser of the occupation, envisages a "big flame" of political feeling igniting across the land.
Written by David Mercer. Repeat of Play of the Month 21 January 1968. Repeated also 1 September 1976 on BBC2 and 29 November 1980 on BBC2, on 23 June 1988.
Jack Gold directs Tom Clarke's play about a soldier turned dissident during the First World War. Protest has become easy and respectable now. But for a young subaltern in 1917 to speak out against the horrors of the Western Front was unthinkable. One did. Second-Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, a young English country gentleman who made public his revulsion against the war. This film tells of the week in a Liverpool hotel when Sassoon re-examined his protest in spite of its complete rejection by authority and the public. Starring Michael Jayston, Michael Pennington and Clive Swift.
Celia Johnson and Peter Vaughan star in the second of the 'Kelvin Trilogy' of plays by David Mercer. The Countess lives happily in her Eastern European palace, oblivious to the new regime that has moved in. After the war, Volubin, a Marxist writer, is instructed to obtain from her the keys to her wine cellar, which are needed for a celebration dinner. Also starring Sydney Tafler, Patsy Byrne and Bernard Kay as Robert Kelvin. Directed by Alan Bridges.
